Installing custom cursor graphics

[aelfwyne]

I want to use the Premium cursors which I've downloaded from the net on my unattended install... however, I've got a bit of a snag.

What I did on my system was to create a cursor theme with the cursors I wanted, applied it, and saved it. I found that it saved to the registry, so I exported the keys for the cursor theme and the current selection. Then, I import those registry keys during install of the unattended CD. I also placed a copy of the cursor files in $OEM$\$$\Cursors so they would be copied to the new system.

It appeared to work, at first. When XP booted into the GUI for RunOnceEx, the custom cursors were showing fine, proving that they had indeed been installed.

However, after the first reboot and coming up on the desktop once everything has been installed, I find that the cursor is set back to default!! Why would it change it back - it was already working?

Has anybody an idea how I can get this to work?

[diesel_98a]

i have the same problem but i come to the conculsion that it might be w/ the luna theme or the .theme file. are you applying a new theme??

[ceerp]

Not sure how fancy your cursor theme is (I can only think of a few cursors within windows) but if they are just replacing the traditional white arrow, timer etc then they can be put into user32.dll. Only drawback is that only .cur files can be used, rather than .ani so the result might not be too good.

User32.dll is where that horrible 4-bit colour CD cursor lives - the one that shows for a second when you insert a disk. Anyone doing a nice 32-bit custom build will want to show that cursor the door asap!

[diesel_98a]

yeah i thought about replacing them in the .dll but i have animated cursors so that could be part of the problem too. then i thought about just renaming them to the same cursors, and extract them using sfx extraction, that way they replace the windows default. that might be something to try.

[aelfwyne]

Okay - I was going to replace the default files... but there's this jazz of default cursors actually being resource files... So I dug deeper.

It seems that when you create a cursor, it stores the schemes in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Cursors.. however, just copying this reg key isn't enough to make sure users on a new system get that scheme (even though you'd think that setting the cursor to that would be)... These values must be duplicated in HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Cursors... which is not saved to when you manually create a scheme.

[aelfwyne]

In case anyone cares, I've figured out the problem. No matter how much registry setting you do, if you have your unattended install applying a theme file, you need to make sure the correct cursor set is selected in that theme or it will default back to the system cursor.

I'm still not sure if the reg keys need to be imported if the theme specifies the cursor - but I'm not taking any chances myself, and I'm still importing them. Plus, importing the keys to HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Cursors gets the bootup to use the custom cursor regardless of user theme.

[MCT]

u guys only need to have HKEY_CURRENT_USER keys & have the .reg file run @ T-12 via commandlines.txt